Fogged Clarity
by AppleCoreCandyBox
Summary: The Truth lies within what we dream. How can anyone ever know that Truth if you never remember what you dream?
1. Death

_**Love—is anterior to Life—  
Posterior—to Death—  
Initial of Creation, and  
The Exponent of Earth—**_

-Emily Dickinson

Ed Finds himself in a vast underground city that he's never even tried to imagine, buildings covering the rocky ground beneath it like a white mold. He walks, searching for a sign, anything at all, that someone might be hiding in such a sad dilapidated place.

He hears music, a crackling array of violins and piano, faintly from somewhere below in the city.

He finds himself dancing with a pretty, soft, and abused young woman. He knows he's met someone with pink bangs before…

He talks to another woman, body decaying around her as she tries to cover the smell of rotting flesh with too powerful perfumes.

There is a baby that leads to The Gate, and The Gate takes him to a dull bleak world being ravaged by war.

He sees metal birds for the first time and asks his Father "What is the Truth?"

His Father tells him that everything he's ever known has only been because of the death of other. The Truth involves Death, and Death is the reason his own world can do what it does.

His Father says that equivalent isn't always fair.

Ed says he's wrong.

Ed dies in this sad, depressing world, the body that is and isn't his crushed under the weight metal.

He thinks if it weren't so odd that he had and hadn't died, he might have thought the situation ironic.

Metal killing the Fullmetal. Ha Ha.

He pulls himself from The Gate, refusing to stay in that dark place any longer.

He's back in the dancing room, his brother stuck in an array of blue lines on the floor.

Ed fights a monster, green hair and face changing in the hopes to smash his heart.

He pauses in the fight only once. Only when the monster changes its face to one that _almost_ looks like it belongs to his Father does he hesitate.

Ed finds himself dying again, something very sharp rammed through his chest.

As things are fading and he's met with The Gate yet again, he thinks he hears someone call his name…

Edward Elric wakes as if someone has slapped his face, his incoherent mind caught somewhere half between awake and asleep.

He's caught in that gray area where one not only clearly remembers their dreams, but also takes what they show seriously. In this one moment of fogged clarity, Edward realizes that he might only have a few more days to live.

And then the moment passes.

The clarity the can sometimes come with half consciousness fades, rationality wakes up, and the dream that tried to warn the young man of what lies in his near future is forgotten entirely.

Ed finds himself confused as fully rouses, bolting up in his bed.

"Is something the matter, Brother?"

It takes him a moment to remember why _–Lior…Al's the Stone…We didn't do a damn thing wrong!- _ he's surrounded by the familiar spare room of the Rockbell residence.

Ed stares past Al, wondering for all but a second –_Why do I feel so scared?-_ before he answers truthfully.

"Nah, it was just a bad dream. Don't worry Al, I don't even remember what it was about."

Al nods and Ed rolls back into the sheets.

Ed is awake for some time afterwards, still wondering, racking his brain for the answer of his wandering mind.

_Why do I feel so damn scared?_


	2. Metal Body

He finds that he can't feel anything. Not anything at all.

All he can do is see and hear.

There is no taste, or smell, or feeling at all. He hasn't even got a face that can smile or frown or laugh or cry or even blink. He can't even sleep.

All he's got is stone cold metal. He has unfeeling, never moving, ever lasting iron and leather to try and replace his bone and flesh body.

He finds himself forgetting what sunshine feels like. He forgets what a restful night of sleep feels like. He forgets what hunger feels like. What cinnamon and mint smell like. What watermelon and apples and stew and salad and honey and even a lung full of fresh air tastes like.

He can't even remember what a great, big bear hug from his brother feels like.

He forgets these things in his years living in the unforgiving armor. He doesn't want to forget, honestly he doesn't, but his body does all the same.

It scares him. He doesn't want it to, but it does.

And it's this fear that wakes up a three year old Alphonse in the middle of the night. Has him bawling his eyes out at the lingering feeling of absolute hopelessness his dream has left him with.

All night, Al cries about how he doesn't ever want to forget sunshine and watermelons and fresh air and mint and great big bear hugs.

Trisha Elric doesn't know how to calm her youngest down, and a four year old Edward doesn't know how to cheer his little brother up. Neither one of them knows what he's talking about, try to assure him that he'll never forget such things.

Try to tell him it was just a bad dream.

All the same, even with their kind and soothing words, Al still cries and yells about how he doesn't want to have to live in such a scary metal body.

------

Poor little Al...(;_;)...


	3. Babies

Trisha Elric finds herself married to the most wonderful man she's ever met. Golden hair, golden eyes…just like some kind of angel her mother use to tell her about in fairytales.

She finds herself in his arms, in bed, loving each other as a wife and husband do.

She finds herself pregnant, twice. Two perfect little boys the joyous byproduct of all her labor pains.

She gets to feed them, hold them, watch them grow, love them in a way she'd never loved any persons before. Not even her dear husband.

She finds herself one day without her angelic husband. Her heart breaks at this and never quite manages to fix itself properly.

She finds her body getting sicker and sicker. She finds it impossible to tell her babies that she wouldn't be able to see them get married, that their own children wouldn't have a grandmother.

She finds herself dead, her little boys grieve so much that they try to bring her back to life.

She sees them fail and finds the fake they've managed to bring back is nowhere near to being what she once was.

She finds herself grieving for them, her little baby boys, trying to fix what they'd done in a desperate act to see their mommy just_ one_ more time.

She cries for them, because she finds that the great scheme of things was being far too cruel when it decided to take her away from her babies when they needed her the most…

"Trisha, wake up silly goose!" Is what she hears one of her brothers' call as she rouses from her nap under the house's apple tree.

Sitting up and rubbing her eyes in a groggy manner, a twelve year old Trisha Elric wonders what sort of dream she would have had to make her heart feel so heavy and sad. She can't think on it for very long, though, when one of her older brothers drop an under ripped apple on her head from the branches above her.

She mutters angrily, scampering up the tree to give chase.

She hopes silently to herself, that when she grows up and has kids, that she only gives birth to sweet little girls and not annoying little boys like her brothers…

------

To the woman who started it all…R.I.P Trisha Elric…


End file.
